You can also read this poem in the original Punjabi: visit this page on our website. (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to see the document.)

Notes courtesy of Arc:

Amarjit Chandan was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1946,
and lives and works in London. He has published seven collections of
poetry and four books of essays in Punjabi and his poems have appeared
in anthologies and magazines world-wide. He has edited and translated
into Punjabi about thirty anthologies of Indian and world poetry and
fiction by, among others, Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet, Cardenal,
Martin Carter and John Berger. He was one of ten British poets selected
by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, on National Poetry Day in 2001, and
he participated in the International Aldeburgh Poetry Festival the same
year. He has given many readings throughout the world including at
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and, in the USA, at the University of
California Santa Barbara and Columbia University. Sonata for Four Hands is the first collection by Amarjit Chandan to be published in the UK.

He has received numerous literary awards for his work, including the
Life-time Achievement Award by the Language Department of the Punjab
Government, India in 2004; the Life-time Achievement Award by the
Panjabis in Britain All-Party Parliamentary Group, London in 2006; and
the Life-time Achievement Award by the Anad Foundation New Delhi in
November 2009. A short poem by Amarjit Chandan in both Punjabi and
English is engraved in granite by the artist Alec Peever and installed
in a square in Slough High Street.

Amin Mughal (co-translator) was born in the Punjab
in 1935 and has lived in England as a political exile since 1984. He is a
critic of Urdu and Punjabi literature. He taught English at Islamia
College and Shah Hussain College in Lahore. As a leader of the National
Awami Party, he was imprisoned a number of times. He worked for the
weekly magazine Viewpoint in Lahore and was editor of Awaz, an Urdu daily published in London.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc has adhered to its
fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK
readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain
unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of
contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the
publication of books about music and musicians.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the
poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held
by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should
be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual
publishers.

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